


We Could Steal Time

by Silberias



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, LF is a creeper, Quentyn is adorable and needs to live, Quentyn is here to vanquish baddies and rescue maidens and he's all out of maidens, Strained Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 13:05:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11829339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias
Summary: Instead of sending Quentyn to Essos, Doran sends him with his uncle to the Vale to chase down a persistent rumor.





	We Could Steal Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [branwyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/gifts).



> I was bitten by a rabid plot bunny. Also if Ned Stark had had a line of potential spouses for Sansa, rather than the sticky spot of the King wanting her for his own son, Ned would have picked someone like Quentyn for her. Title is from Heroes by David Bowie because who would I be if I didn't try and name all my stories with Bowie lyrics?
> 
> This was written and is now being posted after some encouragement from the lovely Branwyn. Go give her stuff a read, you won't be disappointed!

Quentyn was unsure of the match uncle made for him. Lady Sansa Stark was the heir to Winterfell and the North, all her other family being dead and gone, and widely rumored--now confirmed--to be a truly beautiful woman. Quentyn on the other hand was a second son of House Martell, awkward and plain of both face and refinements. Unlike Uncle Oberyn he had not cultivated a brave facade to mask his worries, nor had he developed a tranquil one to cover his heart as his father had.

He was not unfamiliar with the Starks of course. Quentyn met Lord Stark years ago, before he was even a squire to House Yronwood, on a great expedition to the North by Uncle Oberyn. The Red Viper had wanted to see the Wall in all it's mighty splendor, to see for himself if it truly wept for feeling the sunlight on its icy face. Quentyn was deemed a little young to be exposed to the men of the Watch and had been left behind with Arianne at Winterfell. It was the first visit to Winterfell by a Prince and Princess of Dorne ever recorded and they had been treated well and kindly.

This match had not been in the cards back then, he knew that to be the truth for even as a boy of six Quentyn had seen the distance between his uncle and Lord Stark. They were cordial but cool to one another. Similarly Quentyn and Arianne had been a little unsure of themselves around the toddling babes Robb and the little bastard Jon--Sansa had been but a babe in arms, and Quentyn had been skittish of asking Lady Stark if he might peer into the infant's bassinett. Arianne had said the baby was as unremarkable as their little brother Trystane was and not to worry himself over it. She was eleven at the time and Quentyn had taken her word for law.

The visit to Winterfell was for the most part relegated to his childhood once he was sent to the Yronwoods for Uncle Oberyn's indiscretions. Quentyn had weapons and history to learn, as well as how to run a keep for he was a younger son and whatever Dornish girl he married was likely to be the heir of her holdfast--it would be his job to see that the servants were busy and the household income was managed intelligently.

And then his uncle had arrived bearing a letter from his father: they were to go and follow a rumor, subtle but persistent, in the Vale. They searched for a dark haired but bloody headed maid with stone around her heart, Uncle Oberyn had said when Quentyn asked what they were supposed to find in the Vale. A bit of gibberish to teach him caution, he had assumed at the time.

That was until he had seen Lord Baelish's bastard daughter, Alayne, whose smiles were as empty as her eyes. His uncle had sequestered himself in long meetings with Lord Baelish and other noblemen of the Vale, feeling out treaties for lumber in exchange for whatever these Valemen might accept from the merchants of Dorne. Quentyn had been left much by himself and he tried to get to know the beautiful girl who seemed to be Lord Arryn's caretaker.

In his dreams he saw her fat with child the way he vaguely remembered of his mother when she'd carried Trystane. Her cheeks were full, her thighs round and soft, her belly stretched beneath her gowns. In some of his dreams though he saw her standing incredibly tall and straight, blood splattered on her face, clutching a dagger she pressed to his neck.

Getting to know the girl went out the window one morning when he, on his way to break his fast with his uncle, heard a man's half-muffled grunt of pain and a slap in the connecting hallway ahead--and within the space of a breath, Alayne Stone bolted into view and past him. Quick on her heels was her father. Lord Baelish was normally perfectly presentable at any hour of the day but this morning his lip was pouring blood--someone had bitten him with intent.

Without thinking too hard on it Quentyn stepped in the man's way. He knew, from a lifetime living near the Dornish border, that the men outside of Dorne were perverse and sick--with rumors that some lords got bastards on their own bastards. Quentyn had thought those to be just rumors, meant to make Dornishmen feel better for the disrespect heaped on them at every turn.

"The lady has gone to refresh herself, my lord," he said, trying to contain the churn of his guts at the thought--the thought of Alayne's father kissing her in a way that she could half-tear his lower lip off with her teeth. No father ought to kiss his daughter so, even if she were a bastard.

"She is no lady to treat her father thusly," Lord Baelish said, now patting his doublet for a kerchief to stem the bleeding, his words carrying a lisp on account of his wound. He made to go around Quentyn but Quentyn blocked him once again. He didn't think he could quite murder Lord Baelish for his suspicion but to have the man running after Alayne meant Uncle Oberyn might wake--and his uncle was not known for kindness to those who hurt their children.

Lord Baelish's eyes narrowed and his hand was quick as he reached for a dagger--but Quentyn was quicker and no sooner than Lord Baelish drew steel did Quentyn's own blade find its way to the column of blood just under the center of the ribcage. It was the most mortal of blows and Baelish sucked in a breath he didn't live long enough to actually scream with, sinking down and sinking off Quentyn's knife to sprawl and spasm on the floor.

His blood was bright as it quickly left his body, the sounds he made as he died were gutteral--like a steer at slaughter, heard from a distance.

Quentyn had barely enough sense not to drop the knife as he stumbled towards his uncle's rooms--knocking and knocking and knocking until the man opened the door and stopped short. The Red Viper took in the sight of his nephew and only asked if the deed had been necessary. It was the same question that Father had asked Uncle Oberyn after the debacle with the Yronwoods: had the deed been necessary? The answer of the Red Viper was well known to Quentyn, who had been the one to pay for it:

"For me? No. For the lady? Yes, most assuredly, and a thousand times yes."

So Quentyn answered with the only words he could summon:

"For me? No. For the lady Alayne Stone? Yes."

A weariness settled on his uncle's shoulders but he moved into action quickly despite it--they gathered whatever they could pack in the span of mere minutes, for no alarm had yet been sounded for the hour was very early, and they found the lady in question and instructed her to do the same. She was white with fear as Quentyn helped her pack a few dresses and bleeding cloths, but she did not hesitate or freeze.

As they made their escape, only barely making it through the gates before a great many servants and men-at-arms were called into the keep as an alarm was raised. They were lucky, Quentyn thought as he held Alayne Stone in his arms as they galloped away, that they did not try to escape from the Eyrie itself. Winter was almost upon the Vale and the court of Lord Arryn had moved to the Gates of the Moon.

More than a week later they stopped at a proper inn--his uncle had led them on a meaningful and quick journey away from the heart of the Vale, cutting west to the wastes of the Riverlands, cutting east and making it seem their destination was Braavos, cutting north to somewhere like White Harbor, cutting south home to Dorne, but really moving southwest towards Highgarden and Old Town. Alayne and Quentyn were exhausted and half starved, gorging down on the hearty stew his uncle bought with a silver stag. Only a few apples and hares had been found for them since their flight began.

"Do you know where we are?" his uncle asked quietly, giving them each a cup of watered wine.

"Tumbler's Falls--I--I heard, well I heard one of the--" Alayne stammered and then sealed her lips closed.

"Aye, you are a smart girl, one who knows her mother's lands. We are faced with a decision here, my lady, one only you may make. Within a fortnight we will need to soak your hair in acorn ink once more, or we wash it out in the stream tomorrow."

Alayne looked not a maid of sixteen, as she claimed to be, but a girl of three or maybe four and ten. Her eyes were sad, too, as she opened her mouth to answer him--to explain maybe. Quentyn was certainly mystified.

"Do not speak it," Uncle Oberyn cautioned, taking a long draught from his own cup, "only make your decision."

"Where do you take us?" her voice was quiet, resigned, as she avoided truly answering.

"The Starry Sept, if we can make it there. From there take a boat to Starfall, or Salt Shore, and then ride on or sail on to Sunspear."

"Uncle?"

"Am I to be consulted at all?" Alayne's voice was still low but had a sharper edge to it now too. She obviously heard something in the Red Viper'swords that Quentyn himself did not.

"My lady, until you are as you should be I cannot consult you--the one my brother charged me to speak with is red of hair and stands beneath a wolf courant. Now, I recommend you both eat up and then retire to bed for we will not stop until nightfall tomorrow."

Quentyn glared at his uncle’s tone—the lady had asked a legitimate question, one even little Gwyneth Yronwood’s  maid  would demand as her due. It was not a Dornishman’s way to so brusquely silence a woman. While stoically chewing on an end of bread Uncle Oberyn met that gaze with ease, his lined face showing nothing at all in reaction to it. He would, Quentyn divined, do as he wished and Quentyn turned his attention to eating his food.

Whatever looks then passed between the Red Viper and Alayne Stone he did not see them—although h is uncle sent him the next morning to buy a few bricks of soap. The lady had chosen to rinse the ink from her hair, ti seemed. Quentyn bought one hard and harsh soap, one of a softer lather according to the soapmaid. When he returned to the inn he pulled Alayne up onto his horse, settled between his arms as was customary for them and followed the direction his uncle dictated. They rode all day, and then another two, before they camped next to a stream. They were getting low on the food Alayne had purchased from the inn and would need to replenish if they could.

Quentyn went to set traps and when he returned Alayne was wrapped in his spare cloak and she paced slowly near the bank of the stream. Her hair was loose and fell in dark brown waves to her thighs. At the part in her hair he could see either blonde or red hair growing out, the roots telling the truth of her birth: she was no bastard of House Baelish, and her name might not even be Alayne.

A glance at his uncle confirmed it: he knew who she was, and they spoke to one another as though she knew him too.

They helped her scrub the ink from her hair, slowly revealing red hair after a few rinses. The reason for her theft of his spare cloak was clear, too, for she lay in her shift and the cloak—half in the stream so both Oberyn and Quentyn could kneel in the water and wash her hair. The soap enraged his skin long before they were through and when his uncle announced they were finished he felt like his hands had been flayed. It was worth it though, it was more than worth it. She looked like the Maiden, missing only a crown of flowers.

Uncle Oberyn stiffly stood up and then reached a hand down to both of them, pulling them up with only a little effort. For a breath the three of them stood there in the stream, shivering and their clothing sopping wet— Quentyn knew his lips were just as pale and thin as the lady’s. A fall day was not one to spend dunked in a stream.  His uncle cleared his throat and began to speak:

“Nephew, may I present Lady Sansa Stark, the Lady of Winterfell and the North.” It was like being clobbered in the head and Quentyn only barely remembered to bow to her as she lifted her hand so he could kiss it. Her hands were quivering, from nerves or cold he couldn’t tell.

“Lady Sansa, may I present my nephew Prince Quentyn Nymeros Martell of Sunspear and Dorne—now, let us build a fire and warm our bones.” With that Uncle Oberyn bowed to the lady and walked off to start on the fire. It should have broken the long moment between them but Quentyn found himself moving his hand slightly to hold her hand better. These last two weeks he had kept safe the last jewel of the North, the heir of a dead king, in his arms as they made their frantic escape. Ala—Sansa swallowed and did not retreat when he took half a step closer to her.

“I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly, my lord,” she said softly, “for your services to me whilst we were in the Vale.”

How pretty they’d taught her to speak of an attempted rape. It left Quentyn reeling for a moment.

“My lady I acted as a knight ought to, and—and were you truly the bastard daughter of House Baelish I would still have done so.” The smile Sansa gave him left him breathless, and her next words sealed his fate.

“I believe you, and again I thank you. Would you be so kind as to hold a cloak up so I may change into my dress?”

With a burning face he nodded an agreement, following where she led him to the small pile of her clothing. His cloak, just as soaked as the rest of her, clung to her curves for a moment when she unclasped it and let him lift it from her shoulders. He turned his head far around and met his uncle’s eyes across the distance. There was a contemplative look on the man’s face which honestly made him tense up more than if there’d been something lusty in the Red Viper’s eyes.

She was Sansa Stark—she could, if the notion took her, call herself Queen in the North. If a man was smart he would marry her and let his son be called King—if a man was smart and bad he would marry her and call  himself  King. As he stood there listening to her efficient movements—removing the shift, tying her smallclothes on, shimmying into her dress and cinching the back of it shut—Quentyn vowed she would meet no bad man, and that he would be at her side to support her should she meet a smart man. His father would not like it—but Quentyn had already given most of his life in service to his father, he was grown and the debt of the Martells had long been paid to the Yronwoods. He was of an age where he might consider himself free to act on his own.

So lost was he in his thoughts that he twitched when Sansa took his cloak back, her hair still loose—not tied away conservatively as she usually wore it since he’d known her. She gave him a slight smile and softly suggested he find a few long sticks or branches—they could hang some of his and Uncle Oberyn’s clothing to dry by the fire that was now merrily licking at the wood Uncle Oberyn had gathered.

That night he had a nightmare about Petyr Baelish, rather than killing Petyr Baelish.

It had been so necessary, and at the time he had felt little remorse—but now in his dream he hesitated, he asked how the Lord Protector had come by such a wound, and he listened. Everything in him, everything that knew the truth of a woman fleeing a man bitten bloody, screamed against the words but they still crawled and buzzed in his ears like mosquitos. A bastard girl run wild with her passions—and a father only meant to discipline her, trying to overcome her cursed blood. But then the girl’s hair was red as the blood from Baelish’s lip, from his middle, from the hot pool that greedily covered the floor of the hallway—and for all the guards that poured around them none lifted a finger as Baelish sank his fingers in her hair and forced his mouth on hers, a hard hand holding her chin immobile before trailing, dragging down—

Quentyn woke with a strangled shout, breathing hard and feeling sweat pour down his back. His heart beat so fast as to be painful.

And then a white hand with delicate fingers lay down on his, Sansa shuffling on her knees closer to him.

“I would always have honeyed milk to calm my nerves, pretending it was milk of the poppy or dreamwine, that I would wake back home or never at all,” she whispered, “but as we have neither milk nor honey—” she leaned in, possibly to kiss his cheek or maybe even his lips, and Quentyn got hold of himself enough to put a light hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

“You are more than a balm to a man’s unrest, my lady,” he murmured, moving to clasp her hand with both of his, smoothing his callused fingers against the inside of her wrist and then lifting her fingers to brush a kiss against them, “but I thank you. Please, rest.”

She shook her head, her hair dark and bloody in the dying firelight.

“Your father and uncle mean us to wed, why else would the Red Viper make for the Starry Sept rather than Prince’s Pass or the Boneway? I don’t mean to have a full—a full meal, but allow me a taste.”

“They would not make you wed against your will, my lady,” Quentyn replied, feeling a bit ill that  this  was to be the newest duty required of him by his father. He didn’t want it to be true.

He knew it to be true.

“I am heir to my father and my brothers, I must marry someone or be carried off in the night to recite my vows with a dagger tickling my ribs. They cannot make me, you are right, but you are here and breathing—and I feel that they  would  make you. So I ask, freely, for a kiss freely given.”

He had no argument for her, and with a short sigh to prepare himself he straightened up better and leaned in quickly to kiss her. Unlike Cletus or his uncle Oberyn he had not much practice—Quentyn had enough thought that he knew how to start. Wet his lips and seal them to hers, a little pressure here—and there—and then retreating, returning. He dare not capture one of her lips with his teeth but instead delicately opened his mouth in hopes she would reciprocate, and he hummed with surprise and pleasure when she did. This was much more than a taste.

When she ended the kiss it was not by pulling away in fear. No, Sansa uncoupled their mouths and urged him to lie back—curling up to his side, one of her hands finding purchase in the front of his tunic, her fingers curling tightly around the material. Quentyn worried a little what his uncle would say upon the morning but if Sansa was truly correct then there was little point in keeping her at arm’s length for another twelve days. He was certainly puzzled by the turn of today’s events but not disturbed by them too much—he had privately been entertaining the idea of asking Alayne Stone to be his paramour, and live as Arianne’s right hand while fathering a litter of bastards with the woman he could never marry, if she were willing.  


Prince Quentyn Martell could not wed Alayne Stone—but Prince Quentyn Martell could certainly marry Lady Sansa Stark. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading--please let me know what you thought!
> 
> And Baelish dies so quickly because Quentyn stabbed him in the abdominal aorta--it is a blood vessel about the diameter of a garden hose, and if it goes then you have 2-4 seconds to live. It's great. D:


End file.
